


runs a river (that will never find home)

by WDW



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:51:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13039161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WDW/pseuds/WDW
Summary: [A missing scene from the finale.]Dipper and Mabel, watching their Grunkles scream and sob and beg for Bill to spare their lives.  Dipper and Mabel, watching their Grunkles sacrifice the universe for their sake.Dipper and Mabel, losing their Grunkle in a way they hadn't even known to fear.





	runs a river (that will never find home)

**Author's Note:**

> me: i really need to make this app i have been procrastinating on for three weeks, i connected the back-end and did literally nothing else
> 
> also me: i wonder how dipper and mabel felt about the stan switcheroo. about seeing 'ford' make the deal. about the realization that they were going to lose their grunkle in a way they hadn’t even known to dread.
> 
> [several hours later]

For one frozen moment, Dipper could only stare at the shooting star symbol that had taken the place of Bill’s slit pupil. Then sick realization hit like a battering ram and his heart began to thunder in his chest, stamping out a rapid-fire beat of _no no please_ no as he turned to reach futilely for his twin sister, meeting her frightened eyes with his own.

Just beyond Mabel’s head, Dipper saw Bill’s fingers move to snap.

 _“Wait!”_ Came a familiar cry of Great-Uncle Ford’s voice, sharp as a whip but tinged with obvious fear. There was a hoarseness to it that he had never heard before.  “Don’t - don’t touch them, Bill.”

Bill stopped, his eye slowly rotating towards the prison as if in amusement. His hand was still held up, however, and Dipper was momentarily, illogically afraid that he would - do _it_ anyways. Just for fun - this was Bill, after all.

“Well, well, _well_ , is my eye deceiving me?” He cooed. “Is the great Stanford Pines _giving up_?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Ford said dully and then slowly, as if pulling teeth, “I surrender, Bill. Let. Them. _Go_.”

A split-second later, the tight grip enveloping the lower half of his body disappeared and he was falling through the air. Before Dipper could react, his face collided with the weirdly warm floor of Bill’s Fearamid. He lay there for a moment, body aching in places he didn’t even know existed, head spinning as he groped with one hand for -

A warm hand enclosed his, and Dipper sagged with relief, unconsciously relaxing just from the knowledge that Mabel was here _._ Mabel was _safe._

“Don’t do it, Ford!” He heard dimly. The black-suited form of Grunkle Stan grabbed at Ford, pulling him up by his lapels. “It’ll destroy the universe, you know that!”

“Let go of me, Stanley. It’s the only way!” Ford bellowed right back, brows furrowed in anger as he yanked his brother’s hands off of himself.

Bill laughed, his single eye closed in mirth. “Hah, seriously? _Seriously?_ Ah, you Pines twins - still at each other’s throats, even when you’re all about to _die_!” With one casual movement, glowing red restraints dragged Grunkle Stan to the ground.

There was a familiar, resolute look in Ford’s eyes as he stepped forward and away from his brother.

Adrenaline kicked in. Dipper forced his head up, a nauseous feeling in his stomach as he watched his great-uncle prepare to sacrifice the universe for his family’s sake. “Don’t do it, Great-Uncle Ford!”

His great-uncle refused to meet his eyes. “I’ll let you into my mind, Bill. My only condition,” he said, calmly and evenly, “is that you let my brother and the kids go - with no harm done to them, physically _or_ mentally.”

"Nice wording, Sixer! Glad to see thirty years in the multiverse taught you _something_." Bill laughed, his voice echoing oddly in the chamber. "But no, _really_ , Sixer. Did you actually think that's enough to stop me from doing something I really, _really_ wanna do?"

“ Grunkle Ford! Y-You can’t! He’s _Bill_ , you can’t trust him!” Mabel shouted beside him, looking between both her uncles in increasing panic. “Grunkle Stan, you have to stop him, _please_ -”

Stan gave them a long, sad look from where he was kneeling. It was an expression so out-of-character for his uncle that it took the breath from Dipper’s lungs because - Grunkle Stan _didn’t_ give up, not when he knew what was at stake, not when it came to his family.

He _couldn’t_.

Just a few feet away from where he and Mabel were slumped on the ground, Ford extended a six-fingered hand. A moment later, his grim expression was illuminated by the glow of eerie blue flame as Bill gripped his hand with his own appendage, his eye half-lidded with satisfaction.

They shook hands, and for a second, it was as if time had stopped.

Dipper held his breath, waiting for something to happen because - his uncles had a plan, right? They had to!

Then Bill laughed, a cackling cry of victorious glee that echoed throughout the cavernous chamber. There was a loud crackle of magical energy as his physical form turned into stone and, simultaneously, the restraints on them and Grunkle Stan disappeared back wherever they had come from, freeing them all.

Too late.

Raw fear flitted across Grunkle Ford’s pale face as he stared up, unblinkingly, at something no one else in the room could see. He didn't move.

There was a long, quiet moment, the tension so heavy that Dipper found it hard to breathe.

“G-Grunkle Ford?” Mabel whispered at last.

At the sound of his name, Ford turned his head toward them without moving his neck, the motion eerily inhuman.

Dipper’s uncle’s eyes had turned sickly yellow and slit-pupiled, a wide ( _too wide_ ) grin spreading across his face, and that he realized with a sick twist in his gut that this -

This wasn’t his uncle anymore, was it?

Then Ford’s (Bord’s?) eyes shuttered and closed, and he slumped forward onto his knees, face still tilted skywards. 

Dipper stared, words stuck in his throat because - because -

Stan walked towards them, a look of pure devastation on his face. He couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off of his brother.

“Bill’s in Ford’s mind,” Dipper said weakly as he turned to face his uncle, already picking at his hands in anxiety. He wasn't sure how much Stan knew about what was going on, he didn't think he ever was. “I - We saw him, his eyes were -”

“I know, Dipper,” Stan said resignedly, his voice losing much of its gravel and becoming something completely different - yet familiar, nonetheless. “...I’m sorry, kids. I’m - so, so sorry. There’s no time to explain now. I have to do this before Bill realizes the truth.”

In one fluid gesture, he withdrew the memory gun from within the depths of his suit.

Dipper stared at the device uncomprehendingly. “Grunkle Stan, that’s not going to work! Grunkle Ford has a metal plate in his head, the memory gun -”

“Dipper,” Mabel said slowly, squeezing his hand hard. “That’s not Grunkle Stan.”

‘Stan’ looked at him miserably. "I'm sorry," he said again, and this time Dipper heard his voice as it really was. "I never meant for this to happen. Any of this."

Dipper knew how to put pieces together. It was what he had been doing all summer long.

These ones, he wanted to throw them away and never think about them ever again.

He didn't understand. He didn't want to understand.

"You - you can't do that," Dipper babbled, crawling forward unsteadily until Mabel pulled him back. He knew, he _knew_ when Mabel didn't, because he remembers what it was like to have Bill in his head, how it wasn't just one part of him that had been taken over but _everything_. "You won't just erase Bill, you're erasing Stan's entire -"

"Dipper," Grunkle Ford said slowly, and there was a hollowness to his voice that made Dipper go quiet despite himself. "I know what will happen once I do this."

His tone made it clear that the statement wasn't an admonishment, or a rebuke. It was a confession of guilt.

"But -"

His uncle refused to meet his eyes. "Stanley knew, too," he said.

Maybe it was the way he said it, leadenly, as if every word was dragged out of him by force. Maybe it was the sudden gravity of the situation, and Dipper realizing that there was no choice, there was no time.

Maybe it was because Grunkle Ford had used the past tense.

Dipper didn't reply. He didn't know how to. He holds onto Mabel's hands and focuses on his own thundering heart, trying his best to ignore his sister's questioning looks. He doesn't want to think about anything at all, but mostly he doesn't want to think about how he would feel if it was him and Mabel were the ones up there instead, how he would feel to be holding a gun with his sister's name on it.

Grunkle Ford pulls the trigger, and the world comes apart around them.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from mitski because i am GARBAGE


End file.
